Iron and Blood
by Gesture
Summary: My hair, brown and down to the small of my back, had been falling out a lot recently. The doctor said that it was stress, that I needed to go on a trip to somewhere peaceful and take a break. My first thoughts drifted towards Oklahoma, which upon some research into admittedly dubious sources, sounded like a stale place to go, even for some mindless relaxation. I needed an adventure


So yay, first fanfiction^^

This should be a fun journey.

A special thanks to A_Wink_and_a_Nudge who helped beta the chapter. They're actually an Angel of Grammar and Punctuation.

This is a BotanxOC fanfic, because she gets so little OC action *winks with both eyes*

Anyway, enjoy!

I wiped my brow. My hand came away wet, sweat glistening in the spotted light that fell shining between the trees. Gross.

Semi-self consciously, I ran my fingers under my arm and smelled them. Grosser.

I didn't think Japanese weather would be so hot: even in the partial shade, the sun turned the forest into a soupy cauldron of tired vegetation and insects. For the tenth time in the past hour, I pulled off the shirt plastered to my back, and pushed my bangs away from my clammy forehead. A few chunks of hair came out in-between my fingers, and I rolled them between the palms of my hand. My hair, brown and down to the small of my back, had been falling out a lot recently. The doctor said that it was stress, that I needed to go on a trip to somewhere peaceful and take a break. My first thoughts drifted towards Oklahoma, which upon some research into admittedly dubious sources, sounded like a stale place to go, even for some mindless relaxation. I needed an adventure to be invested in, something I could use to break out of my own swirling thoughts for, some _where_ that didn't remind me of he—

I pushed the thought down: the name, the pronoun, the connotation. Instead, I focused on the present: the sky, the sleepy chirps of evening birds, the weight of the camp pack pulling on my shoulders, the sun gradually kissing the tops of the trees goodnight. A cool, relieving breeze blew across the back of my neck, parting my hair. My hair band had snapped earlier in the day so the lazy cool air felt relieving. I sat down on the dirt path that I'd been following for the past hour or two. After a day of clearing through spiderwebs and underbrush, I welcomed the relatively clear strip of walkway. I examined the ground closer upon sitting down. Large paw prints were pressed into the damp soil. Lighter, and much harder to see, were the small foot prints of what I assumed to be a child. Maybe the kid was walking their dog? Or running, I guessed: the little indentations were pretty spread out.

Bored of looking at the ground, I turned my attention to the setting sun, which warned me of the incoming night. _Gotta set up camp_.

Slipping out of my rather large camping bag, I set up my obnoxiously orange tent. The stakes that held it down wiggled in the loose topsoil, and I kicked them in further. Outside of the tent I put out a bug candle, trying to drive away the mosquitoes in the air, already buzzing for their evening snacks. Not bothering to set up a fire, since the air already boiled, I crawled into my tent, unrolled my sleeping bag, ate two warm granola bars and a slightly bruised apple, and layed on top of the bag, preferring to use it as a buffer between me and the ground then as a blanket. The climate was too hot for being in a sleeping bag anyway.

Even while not moving, the air was still unbearably hot. I took a swig from one of my few remaining water bottles:I had blown through more than a couple that day. If anything, it was hotter than it was during the day. What the hell? The sun was down, so in theory the temperature should drop at least few degrees. I brushed my bangs away from my forehead, more out of habit than necessity. My fingers didn't come away damp. I felt my forehead again and it was bone dry, all moisture seemingly vanished. No longer was the air boiling, but baking, BURNING. _It's so damn HOT_.

A terrible shriek lanced the air. Ears screaming, teeth grinding together, and bones trying to escape my skin, I ran like hell out of my tent. The world outside was black, the lamp I'd set out earlier still burning, but not putting off light. The darkness ate the flame. A world that used to be dappled with light and bugs and browning leaves lounging in the soupy summer air had, in an instant, changed into an empty void. I knocked into and tripped on pieces of an environment I could no longer see. Then, like the flip of the light switch, the world came back on, and the nighttime crickets slowly began to sing again.

Turns out I hadn't gotten very far from my camp at all. Maybe a few yards to the left of the tent. I walked back, and noticed that my feet tapped against the trail. _What?_ Looking down, the dirt had melded together, like cheap glass or dollar store plastic. My tent was… destroyed. It was melted and hung in distorted fabric strips around the metal poles. My bag was toast, figuratively. The breeze blew again, flowing over my head and neck with ease. _That's odd_ , I thought. I reached for the back of my neck and touched nothing. No hair, nada. Suddenly fearing for the effects the turn of the weather had on my body and not just my camp, I felt my scalp, my eyebrows, for the choppy bangs I'd given myself with a ruler and scissors that I stole. The thick dark patches of hair on my arms that I used to be _so insecure_ over, was gone. All of it completely burned away. I realized how awful the air smelled, like a mix between gasoline and burnt almonds. Luckily, my clothes remained intact: to be expected, since the loose athletic tank top and old leggings read "fire-resistant" on the tag. I always looked for that tag on my clothes, because when I was a kid some local firemen visited my school to warn about how if an article of clothing was put too close to a lamp it'd catch on fire. Been scared to death ever since. My hands and arms changed too, the formerly pale skin red and angry as hell. I assumed the rest of me was in agreement from how tight and painful my face felt. Like a bad sunburn.

I rubbed my freshly bald head and took a deep breath because hair grows back, and tried to soothe my psyche as well as my hammering heart from the panic and spontaneous exercise. It was _supposed to be_ a pleasant and relaxing trip to the woods, but _nooo,_ God forbid life lets me have half a second of relaxation before sending some freak heat wave to drag me back into the depths of Dante's Inferno. What the hell was that, anyway? What was that _noise_? It came from farther down the path, so, with no impulse control I started in the direction the noise had come from.

As I got closer to what I began to desperately hope was just an especially peeved deer or maybe even a wild dog. It turned out to be a boy, his skin streaked with soot. He was sprawled out in a crater of dirt, out cold with the ground around him smoldering heat. His baggy black pants were tucked into calf high boots of the same color, no shirt though. He was muscular, his chest was interlaced with scars, and his black hair had thick, white strands interlaced with an almost starburst pattern around the crown of his head. _Is he dead?_ Being careful not to touch the smoking earth around him, (even though the clothes had already survived one bout of heat I doubt that they'd hold up to actual embers) I lowered myself into the pit with tedious footwork. He faced up, eyes closed, one grimy hand lying beside his head, and the other flopped over his chest. His right hand had an intricate purple tattoo of a dragon that went from his palm and coiled up his arm. Maybe it was a trick of the eye, but as I got closer the dragon seemed to wiggle restlessly on the surface of his skin. As I reached out to touch his little torso and access the damage to his body, the boy's eyes snapped open. Red irises, which were the color of cherry syrup that's poured on snowcones, narrowed with his pupil, and his left hand squeezed my wrist painfully. _I didn't even see him move_ , I thought. His fingers burned, and the dragon tattoo on his right arm danced.

"Ow, ow, ow, STO-"

He yanked me to him.

" **WHERE でした IT GO**?" He spit, his teeth small and pointed.

"What? **Slow, I don't spe** -"

" **THE 獣 馬鹿. WHERE でした IT G-"** His head whipped to the side as a shriek echoed through the burned clearing. Instead of the roar I had heard earlier, the new sound was shrill and artificial with the whining volume of a fire alarm.

Out of the tree line emerged a mechanical monster.

Thanks for reading the first chapter! Any feedback would be greatly appreciated^^


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